Category: responsibility

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom local leaders moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies privacy property rights responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

The Minimal Use of a Finger

Seattle, distracted driving, texting, overreach, government, freedom, eating, drinking, liberty

Drivers in Washington State have a new law to . . . swerve from?

“New distracted driving law starts Sunday, July 23,” the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) tweeted last week. “The law forbids,” Washingtonians were told,  “virtually all use of handheld gadgets such as phones, tablets, laptop computers and gaming devices while driving.”

The idea is to prevent accidents. Though distracted driving’s danger has been contested, texting while driving certainly seems a kind of crazy.  

Thankfully, it’s possible to talk “hands free.”

Which, it turns out, the new law does allow. Drivers may activate and de-activate hands-free devices (and apps) with the “minimal use of a finger.”

Eating and drinking while driving are also disallowed, but those are “secondary offenses,” which police are not allowed to pull you over for.

At this point, another meaning of “minimal use of a finger” may occur to some readers. What starts out as secondary offenses have been known to be upgraded, legally and practically, to primary offense status.

Does a shiver runs down your back?

Yet another rule! More fines!

More interactions with police.

And if all this doesn’t feel “police state-y” enough for you, there is argument in Seattle about whether pedestrians should be prohibited from “distracted walking.”

Yes, some are actually considering that.

I’m reminded of an argument against socialism: government-run enterprises tend to be run “ruthlessly and with special attention to prosecution (and overburdening) of the poor.” Why would anyone want such techniques writ society-wide, in every sector?

Meanwhile, we apparently must live and drive with more rules and more fines and more harassment.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability education and schooling folly responsibility

Only Make Believe

schools, education, students, standards, suspension, punishment, discipline

Problems can be solved. But for those lacking the merest clue how to solve a given problem . . . alternatives exist.

Books can be cooked to pretend the problem no longer exists. And perhaps to fool others.

A series of articles in the Washington Post highlights the effort to reduce the rate by which city schools suspend students for misbehavior. The good news? “D.C. Public Schools has reported a dramatic decline in suspensions at a time when school systems around the country have been under pressure to take a less punitive approach to discipline.”

Results? A whopping 40-percent decline.

The bad news?

A Post investigation found that “at least seven of the city’s 18 high schools have kicked students out of school for misbehaving without calling it a suspension and in some cases even marked them present.” In those schools, “most suspensions were not reported.”*

The Post further uncovered documentation showing that “DCPS officials knew students were being sent home without documentation at least as early as 2010.”

It brings to mind the recent scandal in Prince George’s County (Maryland) Public Schools, where a dramatic announcement that the county increased its student graduation rate faster than any other county . . . was followed by an investigation into grade tampering by school administration officials, which numerous teachers have alleged.

It is also reminscent of the systematic cheating on standardized tests in Atlanta — and across the nation.

Hiding the truth, cheating on tests, lying about results . . . not the actions of a system teaching kids a love of truth.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Seven schools’ emails show that students spent a total of 406 days in suspension in January 2016. Officially recorded? Only 15 percent.

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Illustration based on a photo by Tod Baker

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folly general freedom local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

Syria & Sanity

TulsiGabbard, Democrat, Syria, arms, rebels, war, Obama, Trump, Russia

President Trump has decided to end the CIA’s covert* program to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels battling the government of Bashar al-Assad,” the Washington Post first reported last week, immediately adding that it was “a move long sought by Russia.”

This insinuation that the policy change was simply a concession to Russia belies the recent history of U.S. involvement — and failure — in Syria.

President Barack Obama had intervened.

Very ineffectively.

“Calling” for regime change.

In 2012, Reuters disclosed that the president had signed “a secret* order authorizing U.S. support for rebels seeking to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government.” In 2013, after accusing the Assad regime of using chemical weapons, Obama announced the U.S. would provide direct military aid to rebel groups.

But Obama’s execution seemed more designed to make it look like the U.S. was trying really hard than actually toppling Mr. Assad.**

This may have been a good thing, though, seeing that some of the best-organized rebel groups in Syria are aligned with al-Qaeda and ISIS.

U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) has introduced “The Stop Arming Terrorists Act”*** to prevent American weaponry and material from being handed to terrorists. She cheered Trump’s move, explaining to Tucker Carlson on Fox News that “providing direct and indirect” aid to the “very same terrorist group that attacked us on 9/11” made no sense.

Also lacking in sense is the Obama Administrations claim that the congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which specifically authorizes action against al-Qaeda, also covered the attack upon Assad’s regime. Surely arming rebel groups aligned with al-Qaeda couldn’t be justified under such an AUMF.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* It was not very covert. And not secret.

** In 2015, the Administration abandoned a separate $500 million program to put together a moderate rebel force opposed to both ISIS and the Syrian Government of Basher al-Assad after training only 4 or 5 soldiers. The BBC suggested much of the problem was indecisiveness, observing that, “US President Barack Obama never seemed to want a train-and-equip programme for Syrian rebels.”

*** The Senate bill is SB 532, introduced by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky).

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education and schooling free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies privacy property rights responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

According to Economics

Tom Woods, Contra Krugman, podcast, healthcare, welfare,

“Everywhere you look, economics is despised,” writes Tom Woods in his Tuesday email letter.

You know what isn’t despised? A daily email letter.*

But I digress; back to economics.

“The gimme-free-stuff people hate it because they don’t like being told that there might be undesirable side effects from seizing other people’s things.”

Well, true enough. But turn it around: many people demand free stuff at least in part because they do not understand the bigger picture . . . which Mr. Woods ably provides in his daily podcast and on his weekly Contra Krugman podcast with economist Bob Murphy.

“Politicians hate it, because it imposes logical constraints on what political activity can accomplish.”

True, but, like many in the general public (from whence they come), politicians’ prior lack of economic knowledge also leads, in part, to their hubris.

“Even some folks in the business world hate it, because (1) they’d rather agitate for special privileges than hear the case for free markets, and (2) they’d rather have low interest rates than be warned about the causes of the business cycle.”

Yes, too true. But, again, business people are generally just people, most of whom haven’t even been exposed to something beyond boring and misleading textbook econ, if that. Mr. Woods knows that, since that’s what his mission is, exposing more folks to ideas beyond what he calls “the index card of allowable opinion.”

Well, I’m all about allowing the unallowable — if it’s right!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Historian Woods is now doing what I’ve been doing since 1999, providing a daily common-sense thought that is short and easy-to-read and dropped into your email box every weekday. Mine goes up online at ThisIsCommonSense.com; I don’t see his on his website . . . but I do see a lot of books and podcasts!

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

According to Logic

healthcare, Obamacare, Trumpcare, Affordable Care Act, pre-existing condition

“Polling on every possible option confounds all logic,” or so writes Tiana Lowe about ObamaCare and its repeal, at National Review.

“Americans overwhelmingly dislike the individual mandate and prioritize lowering the cost of health care over all other health problems in the country,” Ms. Lowe elaborates, “but a majority of Americans do not want to roll back Obamacare’s guaranteed coverage of pre-existing conditions. Just a quarter of Americans are happy with Obamacare as-is, but a mere 12 percent favor the now-dead Senate health-care bill.”

Perceptively, she notes that the situation is as bad or worse for politicians, who want to “have their cake and eat it too.” The problem with politicians is pretty obvious: they lie because they are afraid of confronting the truth.

But it seems to me, on the evidence Lowe herself provides, Americans mostly have it right.

We want to lower costs of health care. Well, that should be the first priority. It should’ve been government’s highest priority, since government caused our predicament.

A huge supermajority is unhappy with ObamaCare, which makes sense. The Affordable Care Act is not affordable. But the Senate health-care bill was worse than ObamaCare, so folks were right to oppose it.

The only real issue? Many Americans don’t seem to understand that the “pre-existing coverage” mandate necessarily raises costs. Forcing insurance companies to pay for non-eventualities* requires them to pass those extras onto customers in general. Here is where leadership would be of help.

And where it has failed, our President most of all.

Lowe criticizes Trump for not pushing the Senate’s bill more effectively. I’m thankful for that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Insurers wager against unpredictable future illness or accident, not the sucker’s bet of paying for an existing predicament.

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency moral hazard national politics & policies property rights responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

The Police State Is in Sessions

Jeff Sessions, AG, Attorney General, asset forfeiture, civil, Trump

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions threatens to make himself one of the biggest threats to your liberty.*

President Donald Trump’s pick for Attorney General just promised to encourage police departments to seize the personal property (cars, houses, cash) of criminal suspects.

The practice is called asset forfeiture. It comes in two forms, criminal and civil. Compelling objections have been raised against civil forfeiture, which accounts for nearly 90 percent of all forfeitures. Abuse is rampant in cities, counties and states around the country, routinely used against people who have not even been charged, much less prosecuted and convicted. (Often not really even suspected of criminality.)

“No criminal should be allowed to keep the proceeds of their crime,” he told conference attendees in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Monday.** But how can our top federal law enforcement officer ignore the profound difference between a suspect and a criminal?

No one is a criminal, before the law, until proved in court. Taking away property to make it harder for suspects to defend themselves — which is what RICO laws and other Drug War reforms intended to do — is obviously contrary to the letter of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments as well as the spirit of the U.S. Constitution.

Sessions announced he’ll soon offer a “new directive on asset forfeiture — especially for drug traffickers.” Unless he clearly indicates that it will only be used against the property of persons legally convicted of crimes, Sessions will be merely making charges of an “American Police State” stick.

America’s top lawman argues completely contrary to American principles of justice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Bigger than Eric Holder was. Bigger than Loretta Lynch.

** Sessions also went on to say that “sharing with our partners” — local police departments around the nation — is a good thing. This is, systemically, the most dangerous aspect of it all, for it encourages police departments to take things for their own benefit.

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